


on the lip of a lion

by havisham



Category: The King (2019)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bad French, Death Wishes Liek Whoa, Enemies, Face Slapping, M/M, Multiple Pairings, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Very Much Based On The Movie, hal is a duplicitous twink.txt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 11:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: “You doubt me?” Something deadly flared in the Dauphin’s eyes. “Perhaps I doubt my safety around you, Henry of England, who lived such a dissipated, wicked life before he was king. Tales tell that you sucked on your mother’s breast and spat out poison.”“That seems unlikely, don’t you think?” Henry said.
Relationships: Henry V of England/Catherine of Valois (The King), Henry V of England/Dauphin of France (The King), Henry V of England/Henry "Hotspur" Percy (The King)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 81





	on the lip of a lion

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I watched _The King_ yesterday and now I'm here with this. Is it important to note this is the Netflix movie fic. It's completely unreflective of both Shakespeare and reality. It is also omegaverse fic, so go double on that. Does Salic law exclude female alphas? I've been pondering this all morning. 
> 
> Also important: the WIP title for this is **hal is a duplicitous twink.txt**. Thank you for reading even this far.

An omega should never be king. 

Hal had come into his inheritance early and bitterly, and it had been first source of alienation between him and his father. It was a secret, of course, that he was what he was — all knew him as a beta, just like Thomas, though never an alpha like Father. 

The only one to know his secret was Falstaff, and then it was a careless moment that Hal could never take back. The old man had been kind about it, and from that day forward, become Hal’s procurer of all sorts of things. He said that he would take his knowledge to the grave, and for all his foul words and merriment, Hal knew that in this, Falstaff was sincere. 

His father, on the other hand, saw this as another piece of evidence that Hal was unfit to rule. Of course, he was right. England could not be ruled by a king who would waver so. Look what had happened with his father’s cousin, Richard. Ruin, war, devastation came with his reign. And what was his status? Of course, one could not speak of it, but Father knew — he had almost married the man, after all. 

(How different Hal’s life would have been if he had been parented by those two!) 

Anyway, it was far better, then, that Hal should indulge in pleasures of the flesh (while being as careful as he could with the potions and poultices that Falstaff and Mistress Hooper provided him), and leave the stresses of the kingdom to his father, and to Thomas, if he wanted it. 

There were long periods he could forget about it entirely — it made no difference in his life at all. He fucked who he wanted, caroused and then came home to sleep. In many ways, it was a perfect life. 

All of that ended the day his father made Thomas his official heir. 

Now, Thomas was a dear, lovely boy. When he was young, he would come to Hal’s door, crying over kittens that scratched his little hands or things like that. Soft things. Foolish things. And Hal didn’t — he wasn’t a monster to his brother, whatever Thomas said about it later. He never tormented Thomas in the accepted way of older brothers. He was mostly completely disinterested in Thomas’s life, in truth, but now, all of this was beyond enduring. Thomas could no more take Harry Percy’s blows than could a daisy. Father was sacrificing him, in order to punish Hal. His cruelty and his lack of care set Hal’s teeth on edge. 

Hal thought no more of Thomas. He knew what he would do and so he did it. Nothing more and nothing less.

The moment he scented Hotspur in the air, besides armor and the stink of sweat, Hal _knew_ — he knew that they were — they could be _something_. They fit together. They fought so well, he wished it could have lasted longer. He wished Harry Percy could have lived. In another world, he would have made a perfect alpha for his omega —

He pulled off Percy’s helmet and saw his dead handsome face. How very sad. He noticed as well that there was a mark upon Percy’s neck, and recalled that there was a Lady Percy too. How unusual a widow she must now be. Alas for her, then. 

*

When Henry’s father finally died, Henry found no comfort in it, as he expected. Instead, there was nothing but terror, raw and unvarnished that awaited him. He did not want it, this awful task in front of him. Why did his father usurp the throne only to die upon it and leave it to him, who he thought could not have it?

They made him cut his hair, for a king could not have such hair as _that. _As if having a warm neck was such a crime! Ridiculous, really, but he had much more to fight against. 

When they stripped him bare for the coronation, Henry thought they would all see his secret and take away his crown, kill him as they killed Richard. But no. He was still doomed to it. 

He wished he could die, but that possibility was closed to him to now too. His selfish, doomed family — Father, Thomas — had gone ahead of him there. Now he had to think of heirs and living long enough to see them grow. 

The archbishop placed the crown on Henry’s head and he closed his eyes and smiled, wished remotely that both — the crown, his head, would fall off. 

Neither happened. He was still the king. 

*

They went to France to make war. He was still the king. 

*

The Dauphin was an unwholesome man and he clearly reveled in it. His eyes flared bright when he caught Henry’s scent. It took all of Henry’s will and training not to take a step backwards, to listen to his performance with a somber mien. It would not do to show weakness to another ruler like the Dauphin. _Another omega, like the Dauphin. _

Henry left the tent with a curdled stomach. Falstaff held him up when he vomited later, but Henry still felt the heavy weight of the Dauphin’s dark eyes on him. 

“He’s trying to weaken me,” Henry said, wiping his mouth of bile. “That was his trick, like the ball. Did you not feel it?”

Falstaff said he could not be bothered with such things. “The Dauphin’s perfume was unpleasant, but otherwise…”

“Am I a fool?”

“No, you are unsettled.” Falstaff touched his neck for a moment. “But you did not let it show in his presence, which must have been a disappointment to him.”

Henry smiled. It was weak and half-hearted, but he did it.

Still, he dreamed that night and some nights after of fucking the Dauphin and being fucked by him. It was a curse and also highly embarrassing. He felt as though he was surely a victim of some French witchcraft, some obscure form of necromancy, though neither of them were dead— yet. His linens could not be hidden, as the army was on the march. 

He simply had to face his servant in the morning with Olympic calm. Gone were the days that Falstaff would spirit away his bedmates before he would awake. 

Sometimes the leering, mugging face of the Dauphin would blow him a kiss before Henry woke, achingly hard. 

When the page came back to camp with the head of his friend in his arms, Henry no longer slept. 

*

As the campaign continued, Henry felt his heat start to build in his body and panic set in. It could not be. It could not be. God could not hate him so much. Once Falstaff had left him — _once he had become king _— he had received what he needed when he needed it, but the truth of the matter was that there nothing in this world that could be depended on. Except what one could do by one’s own hands. 

He swallowed his powders and his pills and he prayed. _Not yet. Not yet. Not yet._

*

One last gambit — he met with the Dauphin on the eve of the battle. He told himself it was to prevent bloodshed on both sides. They could fight against each other as he and Henry Percy had done... Man to man, or whatever else they were. The Dauphin did not seem in the mood for whatever they were. 

“If you wish to talk,” he said, his English heavily accented, in ways that was clearly meant to insult Henry, “send away your men.”

“Monseigneur, I cannot not do that,” Henry replied back in his courtier’s French. “No more than you could send your men away.”

“You doubt me?” Something deadly flared from the Dauphin’s eyes. “Perhaps I doubt my safety around you, Henry of England, who lived such a dissipated, wicked life before he was king. Tales tell that you sucked on your mother’s breast and spat out poison.”

“That seems unlikely, don’t you think?” Henry said.

“Rumors are like that,” the Dauphin replied. “What is your answer?”

Henry sent his men away and after a long moment when it seemed that he would not, the Dauphin dismissed his guards as well.

The illusion of privacy, now complete, was enough for them to drop their guard a little, and engage in conversation about nothing at all. Henry was surprised that the Dauphin, whom he had thought was quite mad, could recommend a good wine to him, but perhaps it was second nature to him.

“Does it not hinder you?” Henry asked, though he knew he ought not. The Dauphin did not ask him what he meant, though they had been speaking of the grape harvesting season just before.

“If the world was fair, I would have been as my sister is. She is in a convent, gathering grey hairs until she can be married while I must fuck the world.”

“I’m thirsty,” Henry said abruptly. “All this talk of wine has made me this way.”

The Dauphin raised his brow. “I thought you had changed?”

“I have. I am. Completely and utterly.”

The Dauphin called for wine and dropped a pearl into the cup to demonstrate both its purity and the lack of poison in the wine. They watched gravely to see if it dissolved. It did somewhat, but not enough to cause alarm. As a gesture of trust, of sorts, they drank wine from the same cup arms linked together.

Finally, Henry said, “Look, do you want to fight me to the death or not?”

The Dauphin reached out and slapped him across the face. Henry reeled back in shock. 

After he drank the rest of the wine, the Dauphin said, “I must decline your kind offer. Our subjects must fight and perhaps die tomorrow. Such is their fate. You and I must watch, such is our fate.”

Then he muttered something under his breath. It sounded like _you stupid bitch _but Henry couldn’t be sure. It seemed the interview was over — his men came streaming into the room, accompanied by the Dauphin’s men.

It was only much later — and only to Falstaff — who heard Henry mutter to himself, “How dare he call me a _stupid_ bitch.” 

*

He hoped they remembered him giving a better speech than that. Something inspiring, if they should live. Something prophetic, if they should die.

*

Racing through the irresistibly thickening porridge of mud and blood and dying men and screaming horses, Henry felt his heat going through him. But it was more than that. More than panic, more than terror. This was a horror, but he was the worst thing in it. It was not just his heat coming through. It was him. Pushing through, urging his men to fight. _Kill, kill, kill for him, for England, for every spurious reason he could give them but nothing more true than him. Fight for him, bleed for him. Die for him._ Everything for him. As he was doing for them as well. 

He could fuck the entire field for them, if it meant victory. He was not sure if he did not do exactly that. In truth, he did not remember most of the battle. He did remember the end. The pathetic duel with the Dauphin and how it ended with the latter’s death, and then finding Falstaff’s body. 

That, he would remember to the end of his life. It was sad, huddled thing, unlike his big, boisterous friend in life. Henry sat next to Falstaff and thought, _I am twenty-nine years old. You were closer to me than my own father but I didn't even know how old you were. I never asked you. I never cared. I am sorry too late, old man. _

He was always too late with his sorrows.

*

He met Catherine of Valois for the first time and had to forgive her for her strong resemblance to her dead brother. They had the same strong brows, but she did not have his mad eyes. She was beautiful and most definitely an alpha of the strongest order. 

And she was a quiet and circumspect lady, cutting him to the core with her probing questions. They were talking in a corridor, hands touching together. It was cold — their breaths frosted against the chill stone. 

She was more intelligent than he — their marriage would be to his advantage. And yet, their story seemed a sad one to end on, as she stopped and looked beyond him, he followed — and saw nothing but blackness. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thank you to my beta, Sath!! All remaining mistakes are mine as always!!! 
> 
> \- Apparently Catherine of Valois and Henry V's marriage only lasted two years and they probably fucked once? That's real sad. I hope for her sake that Owen Tudor was _scorchingly_ hot in a Welsh, 15th century way. Maybe he had a real good ginger beard. Catherine deserved good things. Did you know she was disinterred in the 17th century and Samuel Pepys, noted diarist, kissed her corpse? Like, fuck off Pepys. Leave that poor dead woman alone. Geez. 
> 
> \- Did I use this fic to push <strike>sick</strike> good Richard II/Henry Bolingbroke agenda? MAYBE. I JUST REALLY LOVE THE 2012 HOLLOW CROWN VERSION OF RICHARD II with Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear. And also Tom Hughes as Aumerle. Like wow, if anyone's related to dear Timothée-as-Hal, it's definitely Aumerle in The Hollow Crown. Anyway, if there's anything the Plantagenets kink off of, it's killing their cousins. Don't @ me, it's historical facts.
> 
> \- Did Hal fuck everyone in the English side of Agincourt? We'll never know and he'll never tell. Any gentleman now a-bed in England will hold themselves accursed for missing it. 
> 
> \- How do you address French royalty? [Here ya go](http://partylike1660.com/the-art-of-addressing-french-nobility/). 
> 
> \- According to Timothée Chalamet, RPattz fully juuled in full armor and makeup. That's not relevant to the story, just wanted to share.


End file.
